Analysis: Why are the knives out for Mandelson?
In the midst of a leadership race in which all candidates have pledged a break with the past, Mandelson’s support has become poisonous.
By Ian Dunt
One of the more charming, Shakespearean aspects of politics is the prevalence of spectacular falls from grace. Case in point: Peter Mandelson.
The New Labour architect, who was widely credited – and hated – for shaping the ideas and presentation of British politics for a generation, has seen a spectacular reaction to his intervention in the Labour leadership contest yesterday.
In was a fairly innocuous intervention, little different from the statements he has made throughout the last two decades. “I think that if he or anyone else wants to create a pre-New Labour future for the party then he and the rest of them will quickly find that that is an electoral cul-de-sac,” he said. “If you shut the door on New Labour you’re effectively slamming the door in the faces of millions of voters who voted for our party.”
The reaction was vicious. David Miliband, whose centrist campaign was being backed by Mandelson’s comments, was quick to disassociate himself. Former leader Neil Kinnock openly mocked him, saying he was having a “midlife crisis”. Ed Miliband’s election agent, Sadiq Khan, said it was just a remnant of Labour’s old “attack machine”. Diane Abbott told Radio 4 Mandelson’s “era is over”. Rarely has someone in the Labour party been the victim of attacks from so wide a spectrum of the party’s factions, from the right, centre and left – past, present and future.
Once upon a time, Tony Blair said that his job would be done once Labour learned to love Peter Mandelson. After so thorough a dressing down, it appears it never will be.
Just months ago, Mandelson was considered arguably the most powerful man in the country, with more job titles than one could easily memorise and the permanent ear of the prime minister. Then three things happened: the election, his memoirs, and the arrival of a new political landscape.
The general election had many casualties. The Sun came out badly, after its support for the Tories failed to prevent a hung parliament. Gordon Brown is another rather obvious example. Among the political class, Peter Mandelson was a major casualty too. The business secretary had been in control of Labour’s election strategy – organising events, speaking incessantly to the news media, framing the message and driving forward the campaign. It was an unmitigated disaster. The policies did not reach the audience, the message was confused and hard to decipher, and it failed to change the public’s view of Brown. No-one expected Mandelson to save Labour from defeat, but his reputation as an electoral genius took a battering during the campaign, which was considered poor, even given the situation the party found itself in.
The decision to rush his memoirs to print, meanwhile, will have at least earned Mandelson some money. He knew that any memoirs released after Tony Blair’s would be an afterthought, and that the financial demand was for something juicy on new Labour before the main event. But Mandelson’s memoirs managed to displease a lot of people. Journalists hated them because they were unhelpful. The book was colourful and lurid, but it offered nothing that readers did not already know, merely confirmations of well-understood personality and policy clashes.
His honesty offended many colleagues, but it did something more fundamental as well. Many of the book’s passages clashed jarringly with Mandelson’s own pronouncements of the time, leading many commentators to conclude that his behaviour was one of the contributing factors to people being alienated from politics. The book details, for instance, how Mandelson never believed Labour could win the election. But this contrasted unpleasantly with his varied comments in front of the TV cameras. The memoirs proved successful and profitable, but they appear to have cost Mandelson his support in the Labour party and in the media.
The final reason for the sudden outpouring of anger against the man once dubbed the ‘Prince of Darkness’ lies in the new political landscape. Mandelson’s insistence that the next Labour leader adhere strictly to the New Labour model is politically poisonous for various reasons.
Firstly, the New Labour brand is tainted, in much the same way as the Tory brand was tainted in 1997. Even if nothing else changes, no Labour leader will use the phrase again. Mandelson also appears old-fashioned in his insistent argument that any move to the left would be a disaster. Many in the party, including former Blairites, simply disagree with the argument on the basis that a Lib-Con coalition occupies the political spectrum from right to centre, meaning the only effective attack can come from the left. Plenty of media commentators do not accept this assessment, but it is popular in the Labour party, and not just in the usual places.
Finally, Mandelson’s defence of New Labour forgets that it is not viewed as simply a political construct, but also as a method of government. The use of spin, briefings and triangulation are now seen as old-fashioned and a fundamental reason why the party lost the trust of the voters. Even Ed Balls, widely regarded as Brown’s right-hand-man, has denounced these tactics, promising to restore the ‘democratic culture’ of the party. Many people in Labour genuinely want to start a new page and rid the party of its more unpleasant tendencies. Others know that political strategy or the use of the media to attack a colleague will never go away, but that it must be adapted to escape the ‘dark arts’ branding Mandelson had happily cultivated. Either way, they want to disassociate themselves as quickly as possible from Mandelson.
After Brown, Mandelson is the great casualty of Labour’s fall from power, because he became most associated with its methods in office. During the climax of a leadership race in which all candidates have pledged a break with the past, Mandelson is a useful enemy to have.
